My Story

Friday 7th November 2008

It was a fairly normal day at MFI for me, at least it was what had become normal over the past few weeks.

I’d travelled from home in Shepherds Bush across to Colindale, a one and a quarter hour bus-tube-bus journey which had become a ridiculously ingrained, no-thought-required process.

And on the last part of the journey, on the 204 bus I sat in my usual seat upstairs watching the world go by idly wishing that I could do something usual in that time if it wasn’t for the fact that I would get motion-sickness when I tried to read, and wasn’t happy writing in the presence of the kind of nosy strangers who were also on the bus – the kind of people like me!

And I really felt I needed to do something, to spend that journeying time usefully, after all everything was changing.  The weekend before had been an interesting time.  On the Saturday morning I surprised my girlfriend by getting out a ring, that she had wanted for ages but thought had been sold to someone else, and asking her to marry me.

Then Sunday morning the magic stick confirmed that she was pregnant.  What a weekend!  But there was more to come.

So there were lots of things going through my head as I travelled to work, not least of them the fact that it was becoming obvious that I had only a short time left at MFI.

I had been pressured the past week or so by my boss to finish a particular project moving the intranet into a Sharepoint site.  We had gone live earlier in the week and were just tidying up some loose ends.  But when that was all done – I had no more work, no new projects, nothing.  So I began to focusing on guessing when I was going to be made redundant – which I was sure was going to happen soon.

I had already survived about 4 other rounds of redundancy during my time at MFI so it wasn’t as if this period of uncertainty wasn’t new to me, but this time really did seem like it was most likely going to be the fifth time unlucky.  In the early days I had been influential in the e-commerce team, making highly profitable changes, but after the company was sold I was moved to working on internal projects, something which made me easier to let go of I felt.

At a local pub that lunchtime I told a mate that I thought I was going to be let go on the following Monday, based on the lack of work and the fact that my boss was away until then.

About half an hour after getting back from work the IT Director asked for me to join him for a chat.  As I walked with him out of the office to a meeting room my mind checked off all the reasons that he would want to talk to me.

As we entered the small meeting room that was already occupied by a member of HR and a load of paperwork it became obvious.

Considering I had been expecting this for a while it still hit me in a weird way.  The Director and HR person had obviously been through this a number of times and wisely went through everything in a very formal way not really needing me to interact.  I’d gone quite numb.  One minute I felt ok, the next I wasn’t so sure.

Wandering back to my desk I had taken three bits of info from the meeting.

1 – pack up and leave today
2 – don’t worry about any work that is unfinished
3 – don’t go around telling people

I grabbed a box, packed away all of my property and then went to call my girlfriend, I mean fiancee!  I booked a cab for a quarter of an hour later and decided that item 3 could and should be ignored.  I told my mates, told my colleagues and left the building.

In the cab home I contemplated what the future might hold, and decided that on this journey at least I wouldn’t beat myself up about using the time productively…